At the present time, liquid crystal display devices are widely used in a variety of electronic equipment. In particular, liquid crystal display devices are extensively used in applications where the display area size is relatively small, while various types of information must be displayed in the display area when the equipment is switched to various different operating modes. Such applications include, for example, electronic timepieces having a number of different functions, and combined electronic timepiece/calculator devices. In such an application, due to the very large number of connections which must be made to the display electrodes of the liquid crystal display device, the density of the connecting leads provided on the liquid crystal cell substrates for connecting to the display electrodes becomes extremely high. (Such connecting leads are commonly referred to as lead electrodes, and are so designated hereinafter.) Thus, in order to accommodate a requisite number of lead electrodes on a given area of liquid crystal cell substrate, it becomes necessary to reduce the width of each lead electrode, and to reduce the spacing between the lead electrodes. This however results in several adverse effects. The lead electrodes are normally formed in the same way as the display electrodes, i.e. by evaporative deposition, and have the same thickness (i.e. measured in a direction normal to the substrate plane) as the display electrodes, which are usually sufficiently thin to be transparent. Thus, as the width of the lead electrodes is decreased, their electrical resistance increases. This effect becomes particularly noticeable when a lead electrode made of a thin film of a commonly-used material such as indium oxide (In.sub.2 O.sub.3) or thin oxide (SnO.sub.2) is reduced to a width of the order of 30 microns or less. The resultant increase in lead resistance may cause some areas of the display to have significantly reduced contrast, by comparison with other areas in which the lead electrode resistance is at a more normal value. Thus, areas of uneven display contrast may result. If the lead electrode resistance becomes excessively high, then failure of parts of the display may result. It can therefore be appreciated that the problem of excessively high resistance of lead electrodes in a liquid crystal display device having a very high density of lead electrodes on the cell substrates is serious, and that some method of alleviating this problem is desirable.
Another problem which arises in this respect is due to the lead electrodes being spaced very closely together. Due to this small separation between adjacent lead electrodes, leakage current can flow between them, and this can cause problems such as unwanted acitivation of certain areas of the display. In other words, display segments which should be in an "off" state may be set into an "on" state. This is especially true when the spacing between adjacent lead electrodes is reduced to the order of 30 microns or less.